reat river.
It yielded a perfect view of the vastness of the amazing reach.

Below them, out of the solid walls, wherever root-hold offered, the
lean pines thrust their crests to a level with them. Above, where the
slope of the gorge fell back at an easier angle, black forests covered
the whole face for hundreds of feet towards the cloud-flecked skies.

These men, however, were all unconcerned with the depths or the
heights, for all their dizzy splendor. A habitation stood before them
sheltered by a burnt and tumbled stockade. And to practical
imagination it held a significance which might have deep enough meaning.

They stood contemplating the litter for some moments. And in those
moments it told them a story of attack and defence, and finally of
defeat. The disaster to the defenders was clearly told, and the
question in both their minds was the identity of those defeated.

John Kars approached the charred pile where it formed the least
obstruction, and his eyes searched the staunch but dilapidated shack,
with its flat roof. Battered, it still stood intact, hard set against
the slope of the hill. Its green log walls were barkless. They were
weather-worn to a degree that suggested many, many years and cruel
seasons. But its habitable qualities were clearly apparent.

Bill Brudenell was searching in closer detail. It was the difference
between the two men. It was the essential difference in their
qualities of mind. He was the first to break the silence between them.

"Get a look," he said abruptly. "There! There! And there! All over
the darn old face of it. Bullet holes. Hundreds of them. And
seemingly from every direction. Say, it must have been a beautiful
scrap."

"And the defenders got licked--poor devils."

Kars was pointing down at the strewn bones lying amongst the fallen
logs. Beyond them, inside the boundary of the stockade lay a skull, a
human skull, as clean and whitened as though centuries had passed since
it lost contact with the frame which had supported it.

Bill moved to it. His examination was close and professional.

"Indian," he said at last, and laid it back on the ground with almost
reverent care.

He turned his eyes upon the shanty once more. Two other piles of human
bones, picked as clean as carrion birds could leave them, passed under
his scrutiny, but he was no longer concerned with them. The hut
absorbed his whole interest now, and he moved towards its open do